# Is there any empirical reason behind why a food tastes good to one person and bad to another?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-empirical-reason-behind-why-a-food-tastes-good-to-one-person-and-bad-to-another/1026590>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 12, 2026, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-empirical-reason-behind-why-a-food-tastes-good-to-one-person-and-bad-to-another/1026590 "2026-01-12T09:27:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 14

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\
**Post date:** [January 12, 2026, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-empirical-reason-behind-why-a-food-tastes-good-to-one-person-and-bad-to-another/1026590/14 "2026-01-12T13:52:13Z")

</div>

This came up [here](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-taste-work/1025858/9) in a recent “How does taste work?” thread.

> there are inherited difference in taste bud receptors (which are actually broadly distributed other than on tongue - elsewhere in the gut, the endocrine system, and in the brain), innate taste preferences and aversions, and development that is experience dependent and expectant, with critical and sensitive periods including _in utero_and learned preferences from exposure to flavors that pass through in breast milk. With some fairly typical progressions through developmental progressions, including toddler and preschooler fear of new foods and textures (neophobia).
> 
> [https://oxfordre.com/psychology/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.001.0001/acrefore-9780190236557-e-700](https://oxfordre.com/psychology/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.001.0001/acrefore-9780190236557-e-700)

Genetics such as variants of taste bud receptors, development trajectory variations from exposures beginning with prenatal exposure and including through exposure in breast milk and beyond, and sociocultural learning as we get older all interact.

Taste is _different_ than other senses in a very striking way - with vision we believe that most of broadly share the same experience, the same qualia; barring a minority with forms of color blindness and few optical illusion reactions we think we all “see” red and blue the same as each other. Our internal experience of different tastes though seem to diverge widely more commonly on very fundamental ways.

---

_[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-empirical-reason-behind-why-a-food-tastes-good-to-one-person-and-bad-to-another/1026590)._